Hey, it’s just about month end, and here we are again, our monthly gathering of the sacred and profane in celebration of the plethora of releases passed down to we the listening audience from…er…other parts of the same audience, given just how many of us are musicians ourselves.

By now, you’ve probably noticed these are coming through a week or two later than usual, as headlines themselves may suggest.

So it happens that all of a sudden, you’re seeing February reviews at the start of March, March ones at the start of April…hey. Life gets in the way, and for someone who’s ostensibly out of the corporate workforce of late, it’s been at least twice as busy – working on the reboot of a certain podcast only being a small part thereof.

But even more than that, there’s been a welcome increase in folks coming to us, offering up their rosters for our delectation and dissection…or if you prefer, to the vagaries of critical review, in our patented honest, straightforward, incisive and idiosyncratic manner.

Like I always tell my wife, love us or hate us, you sure as hell ain’t gonna find nobody else like us. Selah.

Well, with some unexpected baggage shed of late (the lead quote of the final review on that end should spell it all out for ya), we’ve had a bit more time to dig in on the music and film end of the equation.

As such, despite a fairly full roster of releases on the monthly roundup review cycle, we’ve been able to get this month’s batch of worthies covered and up and running a week earlier than usual.

So let’s turn life’s lemons into lemonade, and all that feel good/keep on truckin’ positivity in the face of bullsh*t business everyone tells you, and jump right into it, shall we?

Ever since our March Roundup arrived a week early, the virtual desk has been awash with one hopefully amenable if not awesome release after another (yes, you can tell the introduction’s being written before diving into all of this stuff…).

In point of fact, there are so many new labels and bands, not to mention a few returning champions here and there, that this may actually be the largest review cycle to date. And being the glutton for punishment that I am, I say, keep ’em coming, folks.

Postscript: a few weeks later and about 80% of the reviews complete, all I can say is there must be something in the air. Not only have there been a veritable landslide of releases to cover this month, but – and no, we haven’t gone soft all of a sudden – a surprising number of them are actually good. And I mean across all genres.

Say what the f***?!?

Must be something going down, and it ain’t with us…

And when we find ourselves giving the nod to bands previously and deservedly slagged mercilessly…all we can do is shake our heads in pleased disbelief.